Wednesday, February 27, 2013

Superintendent John Kuhn's speech at "Save Texas Schools" Rally

I
want to say something to teachers that our lawmakers should have said
long ago: Thank You! Thank you for keeping our children safe. Thank you
for drying their tears when they scrape their knees, for cheering on our
junior high basketball players, for going up to your room on Sundays to
get ready to teach my kids on Monday. Gracias por cuidarlos! As a dad, I
thank you.

Coaches,
thank you for fixing little girls' softball swings and for showing our
boys how to tie their ties. Thank you for getting our children safely
home on the yellow dog after late ballgames, marching contests, and
one-act plays.

Thank
you for buying all those raffle tickets, hams, pies, discount cards,
Girl Scout cookies, insulated mugs and pumpkin rolls, for buying more
playoff shirts than any one person could possibly need and on top of all
that spending your own money on pencils and prizes and supplies for
your classroom.

There
are those poor deluded souls who say you take more than you give, and I
disagree with them with everything I am. Don’t let them get you down.
They wouldn’t last a day in your classroom. You are NOT a drain on this
economy; you are a bubbling spring of tomorrow’s prosperity. You’re a
fountain of opportunity for other people’s children. As educational
attainment goes up, crime, teen pregnancy, unemployment, and prison
rates all go down. Squalor and ignorance retreat. Social wounds begin to
heal. Our state progresses; our tomorrow brightens. What you do,
teacher, is priceless. You don’t create jobs. You create job creators.

Some
people don't understand why you do what you do. They think merit pay
will make you work harder, as if you're holding back. They don’t
understand what motivates you. They think the threat of being labeled
"unacceptable" will inspire you to care about the quality of your
instruction, as if the knowledge that you hold the future in your hands
on a daily basis is not incentive enough.

Maybe
these sticks and carrots work for bad teachers, but they only
demoralize the great ones, and there are thousands and thousands and
thousands of great teachers in our public school classrooms today.

Some
people have forgotten that good teachers actually exist. They spend so
much time and effort weeding out the bad ones that they’ve forgotten to
take care of the good ones. This bitter accountability pesticide is
over-spraying the weeds and wilting the entire garden.

You
stand on the front lines of poverty and plenty, on the front lines of
our social stratification. You are the people who shove their fingers
into gushing wounds of inequality that our leaders won’t even talk
about, and you aren’t afraid. You’re the last of the Good Samaritans,
and you aren’t afraid, even as they condemn you for trying but failing
to save every last kid in your classroom. You aren’t afraid, and you
keep trying, and you haven’t faltered. You deserve to be saluted, not
despised. You deserve to be acclaimed. You deserve so much more than the
ugly scapegoating that privatizers peddle in the media and our halls of
government.

Teacher,
bus driver, coach, lunch lady, custodian, maintenance man, business
manager, aide, secretary, principal, and, yes, even you superintendents
out there trying to hold it all together—you serve your state with skill
and honor and dignity, and I’m sorry that no one in power has the guts
to say that these days. History will recognize that the epithets they
applied to your schools said more about leaders who refused to confront
child poverty than the teachers who tried valiantly to overcome it.
History will recognize that teachers in these bleak years stood in
desperate need of public policy help that never came. Advocacy for
hurting children was ripped from our lips with a shush of “no excuses."
These hateful labels should be hung around the necks of those who have
allowed inequitable school funding to persist for decades, those who
refuse to tend to the basic needs of our poorest children so that they
may come to school ready to learn.

They
say 100,000 kids are on a waiting list for charter schools. Let me tell
you about another waiting list. There are 5 million kids waiting for
this Legislature to keep our forefathers’ promises. There are 5 million
children, and three of them live with me, and they’re all waiting for
somebody in Austin, Texas, to stand up for them and uphold the
constitution. There’s a waiting list of 5 million kids and this
government says they can just keep waiting. How long must they wait?

If you support public schools I want to tell you about a new website. Go totexaskidswaiting.comand
add your child's name to the public school waiting list, the list of
kids waiting for this government to provide adequate school funding.
That's Texaskidswaiting.com.

Our
forefathers’ promises must be kept. We want fair and adequate resources
in our kids' schools. We want leaders who don't have to be dragged to
court to do right by our children.

It’s
not okay to default on constitutional promises. It’s not okay to
neglect schools until they break, to deliberately undermine our public
school. These traditional institutions have honorably served their
communities for generations. It’s not okay to privatize a public school
system that strong and generous people built and left to us; it's not
okay for Austin to confiscate buildings built by local taxpayers and
give them away to cronies and speculators.

These
buildings aren't just schools, they're touchstones. They're testaments
to our local values. The Friday night lights that have illuminated our
skies for decades, the school gyms that have echoed with play since the
Greatest Generation was young—these aren’t monuments to sports. They’re
monuments to community. They’re beacons of our local control, of the
togetherness we cherish in our hometowns and city neighborhoods. We
don’t want education fads imposed on us by Austin or, even worse,
out-of-state billionaires.

What
we want is simple, tried, and true. We want what this state promised in
1876. And to those who want to take away that promise, I know some moms
and trustees and local businesspeople who will say what brave Texans
have said before: “Come and take it.”

Two
years ago I asked state leaders to come to our aid; they responded by
cutting school funding by billions. But help did come: it came from you.
The people of Texas are the cavalry that will save Texas schools. Two
years ago may have been the Alamo; but this year may well be our San
Jacinto.

I
will end by saying this to the advocates who are bravely defending
public education: thank you. And one more thing: do not go gently into
that good night. Stand and fight, and save our schools.

A Teacher's Creed

"In the classroom on the first day of a new school year, I am eager to meet my students. I have rehearsed my greeting and first day’s remarks, but no matter how many years I’ve prepared for this procedure, it’s always new. My heart pumps a bit harder, faster; I feel adrenaline like an athlete, or like an actor, or maybe like a novice public speaker. It’s a marvelous feeling, this first day, because I know that something special is going to happen, and I know it because I’ve experienced it before and I know that I will experience it every time I meet a new class throughout my venerable career. And then they’re seated before me and I smile at this special feeling. This is an assembly of students, yes. But there’s so much more, because each of these young persons is more than just a student entrusted to me. Each of these students has a story to tell, a lifetime, however brief, of experiences, a history in volumes whose richness and depth I can barely begin to fathom. And so as I absorb the first glimpse of these young charges, I must appreciate the extent of my responsibility, of the privilege I’ve accepted in presenting these young souls my special knowledge. In offering them my talent and passion, I am adding an enormous array of new bright stars to the vast firmament of their minds, stars that will never have time to fade in their lifetimes. I will be part of their story. And I know that each of them will always be part of mine. And that’s a good feeling, a feeling that is perpetually renewed, revisited, and rewritten in A Teacher’s Creed."